Virginia : rebirth of the Old Dominion

514 VIRGINIAThe influence of the Virginian academies during the Federalperiod was deeply stamped upon the contemporary history ofVirginia, for it was these academies that had given the earliestlessons of scholarship to her foremost political leaders, her eminentlawyers, her distinguished clergymen, her trusted physicians,her skilful agriculturists, and her successful merchantsof that day.The public school system of our own times offers all theadvantages of primary and secondary education to a greaternumber of persons in each community than the academies formerlydid. To that degree, and to that degree alone, its superiorityis undeniable. On the other hand, the old system of academies,contracted as it was in its scope from a social point ofview, nourished a spirit which was not simply intellectual inthe pedagogic sense of that word, but a spirit that reached deepinto the whole moral fibre of a great people, and gave that fibreadditional vigor and beauty. They were more than schools.They were scholastic homes in which the quality of the soulas well as the powers of the mind were fostered with discriminatingcare and unsleeping vigilance.It is calculated that, previous to 1800, there were at leasttwenty-five excellent academies in Virginia. Some of these earlyfoundations grew into colleges of high reputation. Such werethe Prince Edward Academy, the foremost institution of its kindsouth of the James, soon to be converted into Hampden-SidneyCollege; Liberty Academy, the future Washington College;Fredericksburg Academy, the future Fredericksburg College;Albemarle Academy, the future Central College ; Richmond Seminary,Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Austin TheologicalSeminary were established. Washington College owed itsers of almost equal prominence.In the interval between 1800 and 1860, about two hundredand fifty academies in all were incorporated, but only a smallproportion of them permanently survived. The number founded